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Comment

Thanks, Erik, I'm aware of these commands. I did say "no toolbar way to set them all." While I'm generally very keyboard-oriented, there are no keyboard commands to toggle these buttons one by one (if there were, I would almost certainly use them... something for Scooter to consider!), and there are simply too many "Show..." combinations to be worth assigning and learning keyboard shortcuts for them all.

So in this case, almost uniquely among commands, I find the toolbar easiest to use. Since I'm using the toolbar, then for the smoothest thought-action flow, I want to use only the toolbar for the operation. In particular, I don't want to use the keyboard for part of this operation, and I virtually *never* use a mouse to navigate menus unless I'm just browing an unfamiliar program... too much fine hand-eye coordination needed to settle on the correct sub-command without distraction. So IMO there really should be a toolbar-only solution.

Comment

I think the hesitancy to put "*" button with the toggles is that it is not a toggle. What if it was implemented as a toggle when in toggle mode?

Click the "*" and all the other toggles set.
When the "*" toggle is set, clicking any other toggle will unset the "*" toggle.
When the "*" toggle is set, clicking it again will unset it and all the other toggles.

Comment

Sorry, guys. We're going to keep the toggles as a simple set of comparison states and not add extra buttons to try to make it easier to manipulate them. We have the composite display filters (Favorites) for quickly setting a common pattern. We've added Left Orphans and Right Orphans to Favorites for the next release.

We've had requests to show both the Toggles and Favorites on the toolbar at the same time. This would accomplish much of what you're looking for since you could have the Toggles for complete control and a few of your favorite Favorites buttons for quick selection. I'm not commiting to this change, but I would consider it before other options.

Comment

Thanks for thinking about this. I'd be very grateful for the ability to see Favorites at the same time as Toggles.... especially if you also included an optional "Show None" command.

To me, Toggle Mode is great for manual exploration, precisely because it allows the user to construct a view incrementally and decrementally: "let's just look at left orphans... now let's include left newer. Oh, there are a whole lot of them, let's exclude left orphans and just look at left newer. Hmm, this file changed but its companion is missing... did it not change? So let's include Equal for a sec and check for that..." etc.

Yes, I could do the same thing with Favorites with the same number of button presses, but I'd have to live and breathe BC (and have young eyes) in order to instantly and intuitively figure out which of those multibutton icons is the one that I actually want. Since I no longer live and breathe BC, the odds are slim of my ever fully internalizing the deep geometric meaning of twelve similar 4-color-speckled buttons, and their location on the toolbar. When I try to use Favorites or Drop Down I've got to stare and think, and by then I've already taken 3 times as long as it would have taken me to click the necessary toggle, and I've lost my train of thought.

Given that the toggle buttons are at their strongest when doing incremental / decremental filtering, one often naturally starts a new phase of the comparison with either Show None or Show All. One then works up/down from there. So the ability to quickly unset or set all the toggles is not just to save physical button clicks but to make the work process reflect the thought process. What I think is "ok, let's start over"... but to do so, what is now required is to unset all the already set buttons. Not so arduous but an utterly unnecessary distraction from the thought flow.

Including both Toggles and Favorites (preferably including a Show None command) could give us that, and with Favorites stripped down I might have a fighting chance of internalizing a few simple buttons in addition to All and None -- maybe "Different", "Left Orphans", and "Right Orphans" -- which would nicely complement the Toggles.

Thanks again.

Comment

Our next release will include two new "Favorites" display filters: Left Orphans and Right Orphans. You can assign keyboard shortcuts to display filters, so assuming you assign Ctrl-1 to "show right orphans" and Ctrl-2 to "show right newer", your sequence would be:

<BC2 Auto-Refreshed by script, showing 1 obsolete and one changed>
Ctrl-1 => show right orphans
Ctrl-A => select all (or Alt-E,F if you prefer)
Ctrl-L => copy to left
Ctrl-2 => show right newer
Ctrl-A => select all (or Alt-E,F if you prefer)
Alt-A,C,C,C => copy filenames
Ctrl-L => copy to left
Paste filenames into notepad

Does that work for you?

Tim T Scooter Software

Comment

Tim, since our recent messages crossed I presume that you were responding to earlier posts only.. What you describe is a slight improvement but does not address the incremental exploration which I describe in my most recent post. It sounds as if this incremental style of working is not one which you use much, but I find it very intuitive in a non-routine (i.e. non-scripted) situation.

Also: To do this using the keyboard (rather than toolbar), I really would need the ability to toggle each toggle button from the keyboard. And, not to wax tiresome, the ability to Show All [oops, see edit below] from the keyboard.

Comment

Our next release will include two new "Favorites" display filters: Left Orphans and Right Orphans. You can assign keyboard shortcuts to display filters, so assuming you assign Ctrl-1 to "show right orphans" and Ctrl-2 to "show right newer", your sequence would be:

<BC2 Auto-Refreshed by script, showing 1 obsolete and one changed>
Ctrl-1 => show right orphans
Ctrl-A => select all (or Alt-E,F if you prefer)
Ctrl-L => copy to left
Ctrl-2 => show right newer
Ctrl-A => select all (or Alt-E,F if you prefer)
Alt-A,C,C,C => copy filenames
Ctrl-L => copy to left
Paste filenames into notepad

Does that work for you?

Thanks for adressing this. I guess it would work as well (maybe just a "got to get used to it"-problem). But IMHO a selection-menu like in BC2 would be the best so I don't have to mess with the filtering, i.e. I don't have to keep switch back to original filter after copying files (I never close the BC session).

(Regarding what the other posters wanted, a "*"-toggle, this is not my case since I very rarely want to se identical files).

Comment

"*"-toggle, this is not my case since I very rarely want to se identical files).

As jdmarch pointed out, a "*" toggle idea was to allow the user to easily reset the toggles before configuring a new filter.

This topic first came up in February 2007. Scooter believed that users preferred favorites, and that only a minority of users use toggles. My response then was:

Originally posted by Michael Bulgrien

February 22nd, 2007 at 3:28 pm]
Regarding preferences, I also prefer toggles for the file view, but it bugs me that I cannot easily reset all of the toggles with [*], [=] and [≠] buttons since they are not there.

My feelings have not changed from almost a year ago. If I can configure Cirrus to show these three "favorites" (and only these three) as well as the toggles, then I'll be a happy camper.

BC v4.0.7 build 19761
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Comment

On the other hand, I think the reason I wanted them on the toolbar is because I didn't like the clutter of all the "composite" icons in the View dropdown menu. I've just taken the time to configure Cirrus not to show the multi-colored composite icons in the View dropdown menu. Now it is neat and tidy. I can live with this, and have no need for the current implementation of the toggles to change.

My apologies, Tim, I guess that is what you've been hinting at all along...and I can now see your hesitance to change existing functionality in the toggles themselves. May I suggest an easier way for a user to remove the composite icons from the View dropdown menu? When a user selects "Toggles" in the "Customize Commands" dialog, for example, a single checkbox for "Show composite icons in View menu" would be nice (and disable it by default). If the View menu was this tidy from the beginning, I doubt that I would have been looking to do these functions another way.